Spend time in Japan with politicians and policymakers and the conversation always starts with China. After a while the talk turns to the US. Then it’s back to China. The connecting thread is anxiety. Angst about Beijing’s intentions competes with concern about waning American power.

For a European, the exchanges are unsettling. Europe, of course, itself risks being left in the shadows of history by the world’s new powers. For now, though, its organising emotions are introspection and complacency. Europe prefers to close its eyes to the shift in the geopolitical centre of gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

While the US and China argued it out over global economic imbalances at this month’s gathering of Group of 20 nations in Seoul, the Europeans talked to themselves about the euro. Clutching his British pounds, David Cameron, the prime minister, remarked that the summit had allowed him to catch up on sleep lost to his baby son.